


the sky wasn't enough

by defcontwo



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 05:17:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1886499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She gossips with the other soldiers in their down time, spins tales of wheat and farms and kisses behind the barn, builds up a picture of a good old fashioned American girl, the kind of girl you’d wanna win this war for and even when the words stick in the back of her throat, they fall for it anyways. </p><p>And why shouldn’t they? </p><p>She has no reason to lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sky wasn't enough

Today --- today, she is Nancy. Nancy Lorraine, a private in the United States Army, SSR division. Private Lorraine gets her work done, quickly and efficiently, and never asks more questions than necessary, Colonel Philips says. He likes her well enough, Colonel Philips says. Never here to cause much trouble, that Private Lorraine. 

She keeps her uniform neat as a pin, her hair in victory curls and always with the same red lipstick, waxy and bright. She affects a bland midlands accent, pretends she has a hell of a sweetheart, a real nice 4F at home waiting for her in a small, no-name town. She gossips with the other soldiers in their down time, spins tales of wheat and farms and kisses behind the barn, builds up a picture of a good old fashioned American girl, the kind of girl you’d wanna win this war for and even when the words stick in the back of her throat, they fall for it anyways. 

And why shouldn’t they? 

She has no reason to lie.

  


She is Yelena Belova and she grew up on a farm, that much is true, but it is miles outside of St. Petersburg, not Minneapolis, and there is no nice American 4F waiting for her, just a boy named Dmitri with no imagination that her mother keeps trying to push her towards and anyways, it does not matter. 

She is whoever her country needs her to be.

  


This is a lie. 

  


When she was a girl, she used to lie out in the field and stare up at the stars. She’d sneak out of her bedroom window, bundled up in her thin winter coat, and make space for herself in a hollow ditch next to the field just beyond her papa’s crops. She’d reach out a hand, watch the line of her fingertips, eyes fixed on where her index finger met the skyline and told herself that if she tried hard enough, she could touch the stars. She would hop up and run and run until the edge of the field and then keep on running because it wasn’t enough, it was never enough. 

She is boundless, weightless, nothing can hold her down. She has to keep moving, always, always chasing. 

She is whoever she wants to be.

  


She wanted to fly planes. She wanted to dig trenches and feel the dig of a sniper rifle slung over her back. She wanted the snow in her boots and the blood on her brow.

She wanted the heavy, muscle-burning satisfaction of a job well done. 

She wanted to run and run and never look back. 

Instead, they made her a spy.

  


This is her mission and it goes like this: 

Assess the character of every potential enemy operative. Stand back. Observe. Assess. Make as if you are one of them. Become their friend. The Red Room does not know what information will be useful so until the mission is complete, consider all information as potentially useful. 

Seduction is recommended but not mandatory. Engage the target; find out what makes them tick. 

But Captain America is not a target, not really, just a man who isn’t sure if he’s big enough yet for the skin that houses him and when she corners him, he folds in on himself, shoulders hunched. When they kiss, awkward and brief and unpracticed, it is not her that he’s seeing at all. It’s the brown curls and sure, steady confidence of Agent Carter that catches his eye. 

She knows because that’s who she sees, too.

  


This is not the mission: 

Pressed up so close to Peggy in a storage closet that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, stiff uniforms finding give, clever fingers finding purchase beneath lace and stockings and Peggy kissing like she’s drowning. Peggy kisses like this is salvation, like Yelena is all that’s holding her up and there is loss in this, Yelena knows, a yawning chasm of grief and rage but if Peggy is using her, here, Yelena finds that she’s willing to be used.

The war is over. By this time tomorrow, she’ll be in Moscow, giving her full debrief on Allied intelligence. 

Today, Captain America is dead but they are here and they are alive. Today, she fucks Peggy Carter in a storage closet and swallows each gasp and moan and bitten off curse in that posh, polished accent like a medal of honor to take home with her. 

This is not the mission but really, fuck the mission.

  


The Red Army finds a body in the snow; bloody and crooked and missing an arm, that tell-tale insignia gone missing, but somehow, miraculously, alive. 

His uniform is dirtied and bloodied beyond recognition and his dog-tags are mysteriously unaccounted for, although she has a few decent guesses. They call him the American because there is something in the jawline, in the deep accent that shines through when he mumbles, half delirious, but there is no other name to be had. 

They think they know who they have there in the lab but without identification, all they can do is stand back and circle and wonder but Yelena, she knows. She knows the cadence of his sharp Brooklyn accent, knows the way his eyes crinkle into something fond and soft when he’s watching his Captain hold attention in the meeting room. 

Yelena watched him, like she watched all of them. 

She could tell them. She thinks about it, at least twice a day but something stays her hand. Something tells her to keep this one close to the chest. 

He is something special, that much they know, something more than human. They draw blood and they run tests and they make a serum of their own. Big, solid men are called upon, the ones most noted for their fighting skills. Volunteers step up one after the other to be the next great soldier for the cause and one after the other, they fall, this ramshackle serum burning them up from the inside, judging them unworthy. 

Doctor Erskine was a small, kind man who shared his coffee with her often, the only one to make it as strong as she liked, and he’d confided once in the early morning hours that it was not what was on the outside that really mattered. It wasn’t the strength of your convictions, either, not really -- it what was behind the convictions, that’s what counted. 

It was the intent. That was the trick.

  


Snakes slither like poison into their midst. They come for the man with nothing, they come up for the poor, unlucky Sergeant Barnes and the Red Room trades him for technology, for information -- for a new alliance, a symbiotic partnership. There’s a new war, Karpov says, there’s a new war coming and we want you on the front lines again, although there’s a suspicious glimmer in his eye as he says it. Karpov knows where she was stationed; he put here there, after all. 

He knows she could have confirmed Barnes’s identity from the very minute he was brought in and he has never, not for a single second, had reason to doubt her until now. 

There’s a new war, Karpov tells her, and a new enemy and you know what they say about the enemy of my enemy. 

The Americans let the snake in and now, so shall we. 

Does the Kremlin know, she asks, uniform neat and polished and posture at the ready and this, she will never forget, the way Karpov smiles, thin and slippery and says, _what the Kremlin doesn’t know won't hurt them._

  


There’s a new war and blood on every hand. There’s a new war but no right side. 

Yelena closes her eyes, fists tight at her sides. She is miles away, on the edge of a field at night. 

She’s always wanted to touch the stars.

  


The needle slides in quick and easy as anything, as if it was ready and waiting for her to come along. 

The serum burns and burns like nothing she’s ever felt before and for a quick, desperate minute she wonders if anyone will think to let her mama know what’s happened to her but then her vision whites out and she fades into unconsciousness. 

When Yelena comes to, she’s cold and still on the concrete floor. She rolls over and peers up at the clock only to find that it’s barely been an hour. The lab is still dark and empty and it’s almost as if nothing has changed. 

She could barely make out the hands on the clock through the dim, before. Now, she sees them clear as day. 

There’s a steady thrum running through her veins, something great and terrible and more and she knows, she _knows_ , that she was right. 

Everything has changed.

  


HYDRA’S bloody hands leave their mark all over the landscape of the 20th century. Poznań. Prague. Berlin. Havana. Dallas. Saigon. They are anywhere and everywhere where they can create chaos, breed strife, and where they go, she follows. 

Russia is an official no-go zone. She is in exile; Karpov has damn well made sure of that and every day, her heart yearns for an impossible, far away home. 

Sometimes, she wins. Most times, they win. She is a one-woman army and they are many. Cut off one head and three more takes its place. 

Yelena has cut off so, so many heads and there is blood on her hands, too, but she carries no guilt, not for a second. 

They never send the Winter Soldier to kill her. If she is in one place, they are careful that he will be in another and it is her best trump card. 

She’s too dangerous. 

She knows his name.

  


It is 1970 and Margaret Carter, Director of SHIELD, has grey hairs just starting to come in at her temples. She still stands as sure and bright as ever, though, and Yelena feels a twist of regret, of nostalgia, sharp and swift. 

It is 1970 and Yelena has not aged a day since 1949. 

Peggy reaches out a hand, fingers tracing the shape of Yelena’s jaw. “I rather believe you’ve kept a few things from me, haven’t you, Nancy.” 

“It’s Yelena, actually.” 

“I know.” 

“Did you know all along?” 

“I suspected,” Peggy says, light tone belying the alertness of her stance, the way her eyes trace over every exit in this quiet, empty little cafe in Brooklyn. “I guess you could say that I wanted to see how things would play out.” 

Yelena can’t help the laughter that escapes her, the incredulity that spreads across her too-youthful face. “And did it play out the way you expected it to, Director Carter?” 

Peggy quirks a small, telling smile that lets Yelena know that they’re both thinking of the same thing, a stuffy closet and lipstick-stained kisses, and sets her cup of tea down with a soft clink. “Not exactly, no. I don’t suppose you’re here for that today, either. I’m an old married woman now, after all.” 

“You’re still beautiful, though,” Yelena says, because it’s been a long time since she’s allowed herself such a moment of honesty with another person and she is lonely, too lonely to bear, sometimes. 

“I’ve never been one to fall for flattery, Yelena.” 

“I know. Why do you think I said it?” 

“Emotional manipulation?”

Yelena huffs, in spite of herself. “I’ve never been quite as good at that as I would have liked and you know it, Director Carter.” 

“I know,” Peggy says, “I’m just making sure you still know it too. Now, is there a reason you arranged this meeting outside of nostalgia for wartime dalliances gone by?” 

“Operation Paperclip. You made a mistake,” Yelena says and her voice carries the weight of decades on the run, a fight that she is tired of, a home that she longs to return to. 

“I know. I’m trying. But….” 

“But you are only one woman. Well…I guess I can empathize.” 

“Oh, Yelena, I think we both know that you’re a whole lot more than just one woman,” Peggy says, one hand going up meaningfully to push back a grey curl, a reminder of the chasm between them. 

“Well,” Yelena starts, an impish smile crossing her face that calls back days long gone by. “I could say the same for you.”

  


There is a space between the stillness of her finger on the trigger and the impact of bullet meets flesh and in that space, there is this: 

She travels. She climbs mountains and flies planes and gets mud and snow and rocks in her boots, three for the price of one. 

She makes friends, sometimes. She meets pretty girls and kisses them like she kissed Peggy that day in the storage closet and then she trips her way out of their lives, a whirlwind always moving. 

She doesn’t touch the stars but she gets pretty close.

  


The Berlin Wall falls. Yelena reads the writing on the wall, hops a plane and a train and a bus and puts a bullet personally between Karpov’s eyes. 

The Red Room may not be gone, will rebuild from these ashes, she knows, but its ties to HYDRA are severed. 

Finally, Yelena goes home.

  


(One day, there will be this: 

A fight. A mission. Blood pumping ever faster through her veins, gravel sticking to the palms of her hands and finally, a target in her sights. Bright, red hair curled tight in Yelena’s hands. A kiss that is all bite. The best chase she’s ever had. 

But -- not yet. 

These things come later).

  


The Red Room rebuilds. It stumbles its way through the uncertain chaos of the ‘90s and finds its footing well into the 21st century and above all, it _thrives_. 

Now, it has a new recruit. They call her Elena, they say she’s from the countryside. She’s bright-eyed and full of vim and vigor. She wants to prove herself. She wants to serve her country. 

She’s the best Black Widow since Romanova. 

Better, even. 

When she’s not pulling her punches.

  


Thousands of miles away, Natasha Romanoff blows every cover she’s ever had and effectively exposes HYDRA so completely that they’ll be scrambling for years and they’ll still never be able to achieve half the control they once had. 

Yelena sits in her apartment in Moscow and watches it unfold on her black and white television set, fingernails digging crescents into her palms, and smiles. 

Something tells her that she’s gonna like what comes next. 


End file.
